New York has always been congested, but lately, worsening transit delays and gridlock on streets have left New Yorkers fed up. Transportation has gotten so unreliable that when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently installed Wi-Fi in subway stations, instead of being excited, riders took the opportunity to complain about the trains. “Great, now I can email my boss to tell him I’ll be 30 minutes late,” one rider tweeted.
But there are things we can do to reduce our congestion problems, and a major shutdown in two years will provide an opportunity to test some of these ideas.
The MTA has said it will close the L train tunnels connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn for 18 months in order to fix damage to tunnels caused by Superstorm Sandy. The work is vital, but the mammoth outage will disrupt travel for hundreds of thousands of riders every day. Some 400,000 use the L on weekdays, 225,000 of them between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
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But out of this crisis comes a chance to try strategies that tackle congestion by prioritizing the movement of people, not cars. It should start with bus-only lanes on East River bridges and along 14th Street. Bus service could be sped up further by allowing boarding through all doors. On 14th Street, widening sidewalks, adding a bikeway and shifting truck deliveries to a less busy time of day would also help everyone get to where they’re going faster. Finally, parts of 14th Street will need to be closed to most cars during the outage to ensure the L train shutdown doesn’t cause traffic Armageddon.
More subway service on the G, J, M and Z trains and a reduction in Long Island Rail Road fares for trips within New York City also could ease the crunch. A Regional Plan Association analysis shows that many people who live along the L train work in downtown Brooklyn or Midtown. Yet taking the LIRR from Jamaica to Penn Station or Atlantic Terminal costs three times as much as the subway.
More Citi Bike stations, more ferries and a new network of protected bicycle lanes through Williamsburg and Bushwick would take advantage of growing interest in bike commuting. Many cyclists in New York will tell you that they first used bikes during transit outages, but found they liked it so much they continued to bike after transit service was restored. We now have the beginning of a bicycle network in New York, but too many streets are still unsafe. For our city to be successful, healthy and livable, we need to start designing streets that are safe for the young and the old.
And we should take advantage of the shutdown to transform the L into a modern subway line, with easier transfers, escalators and elevators that work and changes that will allow the MTA to run more trains when the line reopens. For too long, transit infrastructure in our region has been upgraded in piecemeal fashion, dragging out projects and significantly adding to costs. The L train improvements would show how upgrades to our aging system can be done faster and for less money.
For our economy to continue to grow, we need to start addressing the real problems of getting around, or people will stop coming here and business will locate elsewhere. Without innovative approaches, we will fall further behind cities that aren’t afraid to try new strategies and technologies to manage streets.
A set of bold alternatives employed during the L train shutdown can test approaches to improve travel around the city. If they succeed, we can put them in place elsewhere, making commutes more reliable and streets safer for everyone.
Kate Slevin is the vice president for state programs and advocacy and Richard Barone is vice president for transportation at Regional Plan Association.
New York has always been congested, but lately, worsening transit delays and gridlock on streets have left New Yorkers fed up. Transportation has gotten so unreliable that when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently installed Wi-Fi in subway stations, instead of being excited, riders took the opportunity to complain about the trains. “Great, now I can email my boss to tell him I’ll be 30 minutes late,” one rider tweeted.
But there are things we can do to reduce our congestion problems, and a major shutdown in two years will provide an opportunity to test some of these ideas.
The MTA has said it will close the L train tunnels connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn for 18 months in order to fix damage to tunnels caused by Superstorm Sandy. The work is vital, but the mammoth outage will disrupt travel for hundreds of thousands of riders every day. Some 400,000 use the L on weekdays, 225,000 of them between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
But out of this crisis comes a chance to try strategies that tackle congestion by prioritizing the movement of people, not cars. It should start with bus-only lanes on East River bridges and along 14th Street. Bus service could be sped up further by allowing boarding through all doors. On 14th Street, widening sidewalks, adding a bikeway and shifting truck deliveries to a less busy time of day would also help everyone get to where they’re going faster. Finally, parts of 14th Street will need to be closed to most cars during the outage to ensure the L train shutdown doesn’t cause traffic Armageddon.
More subway service on the G, J, M and Z trains and a reduction in Long Island Rail Road fares for trips within New York City also could ease the crunch. A Regional Plan Association analysis shows that many people who live along the L train work in downtown Brooklyn or Midtown. Yet taking the LIRR from Jamaica to Penn Station or Atlantic Terminal costs three times as much as the subway.
More Citi Bike stations, more ferries and a new network of protected bicycle lanes through Williamsburg and Bushwick would take advantage of growing interest in bike commuting. Many cyclists in New York will tell you that they first used bikes during transit outages, but found they liked it so much they continued to bike after transit service was restored. We now have the beginning of a bicycle network in New York, but too many streets are still unsafe. For our city to be successful, healthy and livable, we need to start designing streets that are safe for the young and the old.
And we should take advantage of the shutdown to transform the L into a modern subway line, with easier transfers, escalators and elevators that work and changes that will allow the MTA to run more trains when the line reopens. For too long, transit infrastructure in our region has been upgraded in piecemeal fashion, dragging out projects and significantly adding to costs. The L train improvements would show how upgrades to our aging system can be done faster and for less money.
For our economy to continue to grow, we need to start addressing the real problems of getting around, or people will stop coming here and business will locate elsewhere. Without innovative approaches, we will fall further behind cities that aren’t afraid to try new strategies and technologies to manage streets.
A set of bold alternatives employed during the L train shutdown can test approaches to improve travel around the city. If they succeed, we can put them in place elsewhere, making commutes more reliable and streets safer for everyone.
Kate Slevin is the vice president for state programs and advocacy and Richard Barone is vice president for transportation at Regional Plan Association.
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